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Women's Environmental Network
Rename awareness month ‘breast cancer prevention month’
Breast cancer awareness month should be renamed to reflect the fact that women don’t want to get the disease in the first place. October should be known as ‘Breast Cancer Prevention Month’ from now on.
WEN is organising a ‘toxic tour’ of central London on Monday 28 October 2002 to press home the message (1). Tour Guide Ms. Monique Toxique will lead an array of colourful characters including stilt walkers High Rise Rubber around key sites highlighting that although women are well aware of breast cancer, they may not realise how little is being done to prevent it occurring.
Helen Lynn, WEN’s health co-ordinator, said:
"The number of women getting breast cancer has been going up every year for at least 50 years and it’s now the most common form of cancer in the UK. Advances in treatment and early detection mean women live longer after diagnosis ...but good as they are, such advances are neither prevention nor cure. The ever-widening gap between the number of deaths, and the number of new cases means there is no room for complacency [graph on request]. Women’s lifetime chances of getting breast cancer in the UK have risen from one in 12 to one in nine in just five years yet more than 50% of all cases remain unexplained (2)."
"What we really need is to reduce the risky chemicals and other environmental factors contributing to the rising numbers (3). It’s time government stopped colluding with the chemical and pharmaceutical industries in the myth that breast cancer is inevitable - it’s not (4). Precautionary action could stop it before it starts."
Breasts are big business: each October women give millions of pounds for research yet as today's National Cancer Research Institute report (5) states, very little of it is spent on primary prevention. The toxic tour will visit Government departments and the House of Commons to call for national action.
21st October 2002
- First stop on the tour will be the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Whitehall Place, SW1A, responsible for the government’s chemicals strategy and pollution controls; it will also stop at the Department of Health, Richmond House, 79 Whitehall, responsible for health policy; Department of Trade & Industry, which regulates the drug and chemical industries and consumer issues; and the House of Commons, where MPs could introduce new legislation to enforce the precautionary approach. The tour will be led by ‘Ms. Monique Toxique ’ and feature the High Rise Rubber stiltwalkers among others.
- 39,500 new cases were diagnosed in 2001; a woman’s lifetime chance of contracting the disease in the UK has risen from one in 12 to one in nine in just five years (Source: Cancer Research UK (formerly Imperial Cancer Research Fund and Cancer Research Campaign) figures published 5/11/01).
There has been a steady rise in new cases per year, from 21,446 new cases in 1979 to 34,824 in 1998 (source: Office of National Statistics).
Source for the rise in incidence over 50 years and percentage of unexplained cases: The State of the Evidence published by the Breast Cancer Fund and Breast Cancer Action, San Francisco, California, 2002.
- The steady rise in incidence has taken place against a background of increasing industrial production of synthetic chemicals over the last 50-odd years. Some 30,000 synthetic chemicals are in regular commercial use (source: Commission of the European Communities White Paper Strategy for a future Chemicals Policy Feb 2001), many of which are persistent and accumulate in body fat, including the breast. Some 300 have been detected in human body tissues and secretions, including breast milk (source: Lyons, G., Toxic Trespass, 1999, World Wide Fund for Nature, Godalming, UK. Applied Pharmacology, 2000, 169: p. 177-184). Many are known to disrupt normal bodily processes or mimic or affect the behaviour of the female hormone, oestrogen (‘Putting Breast Cancer on the Map’ report, WEN, 1999).
Synthetic compounds which have shown hormone-like activity in laboratory tests include organochlorine pesticides, furans and dioxins from incinerators, surfactants used in pesticides, paints, cleaning products and in paper and textile production, synthetic resins and plasticisers used in food packaging. Exposure to oestrogen is a recognised factor in breast cancer development. The chemicals are in everyday use in pesticides, paints, plastics and household products.
- Concentrating on family history and potential risk factors, such as lack of exercise, alcohol intake and having children early in life, masks the fact that these causes only account for less than half of all cases. Only 8-10% of cases are known to be due to genetic disposition; lifestyle accounts for only about 30% of all known cases (source Putting Breast Cancer on the Map).
- The National Cancer Research Institute today produced the first ever comprehensive breakdown of cancer research funding in the UK.
Contact Helen Lynn, Health co-ordinator or Liz Sutton, Press Officer on 020 7481 9004.
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